MENOPAUSE ~ RECLAIMING YOUR INDEPENDENCE

“Menopause is not just the end of fertility and childbearing years that are so often seen as a women’s prime. It is the time for a woman to take charge of her health and make the changes that will carry her through her second prime of life”. Bernadine Healy, M.D. Former Director, National Institutes of Health

As mothers, we can’t live and breathe for our partners, our children, we can’t tie ourselves to another person’s shadow; our accomplishments are supposed to be our own. Menopause is about using our common sense, to follow our hunches and follow our own dreams. We have to let go the need to rescue or change anyone and keep our needs up front.

The women’s body is, if we’d only stop and listen, a great teacher that spiritually leads us through a series of powerful initiations—menstruation, pregnancy, birth, and menopause—which transforms us in dramatic ways. Menopause is a natural part of life and can act as a catalyst to support our hunger and longing to explore our inner world and to listen to the quiet voice of our soul. It is an individualized process for each woman. Menopause reconnects us to our passions and emotions, you know those neglected and forsaken ones we ignored while nurturing and taking care of those who depended on us…our families.

“Christiane Northrup describes menopause as a change from an alternating current of wisdom to a direct current. In menopause, instead of an ebb and flow of intuition, you now have a constant flow. In that light, it’s not surprising that many cultures regard older women as wise women and celebrate the ‘wisdom of the crone.’ These women possess not only the wisdom of age and experience but also the wisdom of intuition. And they’re not afraid to use it and act on it. It’s a widely observed fact that many women, after menopause become much more forthright and assertive than they were in their youth. Joan Borysenko put it bluntly: in menopause, she writes, “Women get mouthy.” This occurs because there’s a falling-away of the inhibitions that kept women from shooting arrows indiscriminately the way men do. This change may be a result of increased androgen production. The women who were more tentative in their youth, waiting a long time before even shooting at a target and thereby missing a lot of opportunities, in later life often assume more male patterns of processing. After menopause, they’re more likely to see, shoot, and then score, as men did earlier in life.

All this should really give women something to cheer about and celebrate as they ender the age of menopause and beyond. Menopause is not a dead-end journey into decline and oblivion; it’s an opportunity to tap fully into the intuition network and avail themselves fruitfully of all the wealth of insight and information that network has to offer. Mona Lisa Schulz, Awakening Intuition
If menopause is supposed to be a normal natural event and a time of regeneration and celebration, why have some women suffered a barrage of psychological and physiological conditions and in some cases even become suicidal? Is there a link between estrogen deficiency and mental illness? Could it also be a woman’s reluctance to adjust to change?

“The menopausal transition is actually a profound developmental stage in which unfinished business from the past comes up once again for resolution and healing, so that we can free ourselves from the outmoded beliefs and behaviors of our past. All the issues that weren’t resolved during puberty and early adulthood — such as body image, relationships, vocation, fear of aging, and self-esteem issues — now arise once more to be healed and completed…” Christiane Northrup ~The Wisdom of Menopause ~ http://www.drnorthrup.com/womenshealth/healthcenter/topic_details.php?topic_id=111

“I didn’t adjust well at all, at first” said Jill, a former client and now good friend, “menopause was supposed to be a time for ‘me’, especially after giving away most of my life to my husband, parents, even my children; but I was vividly upset and overwhelmed by it all. I found it excruciatingly difficult to create healthy boundaries, let alone do any creative work and follow my dreams. Menopause literally knocked me down…it was disruptive and explosive as were my crazy hormones and emotions.

When I moved from the perimenopausal stage to my menopausal years my mind went back to my younger days, my twenties, when I was passionate about life, full of ambition, with visions of becoming someone. Menopause was quite shocking and confrontational…it was crude and direct, daring and challenging me to live my life differently. But I didn’t understand it at first and found myself with tears running down my face, grieving and paining for what seemed lost time. I looked in the mirror at the wrinkles around our eyes, the gray flowing through my hair and smoothed gobs of moisturizing lotion into my dry skin to feel better.

Oh don’t get me wrong, being a mother to my two children has been my greatest joy, but they have a life of their own now…menopause felt ruthless and fierce as it forced me, no challenged me to look deep within myself. For the first time in my entire life, even though I’m married, I felt very much alone”.

When we’ve allowed a major portion of our energy to be focused somewhere other than present time, we have to do something to refocus it. We have to stop obsessing about the past or future event—release it—and call our energy back to the present.

“After menopause, especially if this coincides with children leaving home, a woman can believe her reason for being has gone, and there is no impulse to create a new direction, or to find a new purpose.

Do you feel a loss of purpose now that the potential for motherhood is over?

Do you feel you have lost your womanhood or femininity?

Have you lost your dreams and longings?

Have you found a direction for yourself, that is just for you, and not related to being a mother or wife?

The strength of your bones is at stake, as is the strength of your core feelings, your inner purpose for being. The bones are connected to spirit, so you need to raise your spirit to bring it into action, rather than let it fade away.

What can you do to bring more vibrancy and spirit into your life?” Deb Shapiro ~Your Body Speaks Your Mind

Many women in their menopausal years, start to experience sensations and changes in their body: thyroid problems, hot flashes, night sweats, headaches, confusion, irregular periods, vaginal dryness, insomnia and heart palpitations. Hot flashes cause sudden blushing of the whole face, which is so darn embarrassing when in a meeting with the boss or being with a large group. It feels like everyone’s watching as it’s happening! And the mood swings are embarrassing too as we try to cope with our out-of-control hormones. Doctors and gynecologists were eager in the past to prescribe hormonal treatments (HRT) and women took it eagerly because advertisements promised it would prevent wrinkles and hair loss and keep them young forever. But HRT also caused side-affects and weight gain which added to a woman’s already insecurity.

With Jill and other women like her, I found that some women have a very strong sensitivity to the declining levels of estrogen in their blood. In fact perimenopausal, which is before menopause, can cause quite a fluctuation in our hormone levels and our very sensitive endocrine system to react wildly.

“When menopause comes it is often seen as an ending to our femininity, an ending to our purpose for being here as a woman, and therefore a loss of direction and fulfillment. It is a highly emotional time (Hence its direct relationship to blood), particularly to do with our feelings of whether we are still lovable and desirable. Many women can become severely depressed at this time, just as men may do when they retire and find they have nothing to do any more – a time known as the male menopause. There is a deep need to find the woman inside, not the one that is just a fertile body but the one that goes beyond procreative abilities; to find a deeper purpose for being here, in other words to find our spiritual direction for ourselves. Menopause like retirement can be a time for discovering freedom, individuality, tremendous change and challenge. It can also be a rebirth”. The BodyMind Workbook, Deb Shapiro

To try and understand the menstrual cycle we need to turn to the endocrine system that governs and regulates it by a complex of interacted hormones: Luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), estrogen and progesterone and are divided into three unique phases: follicular, ovulatory and luteal. The follicular phase usually starts from day 1 after menstruation to about day 11, the ovulation phase from day 12 to approximately day 14 and the luteal phase from approximately day 15 to 28. The whole menstrual cycle is like a well-choreographed dance, with each phase relying on a specific and extremely delicate hormonal balance. But this delicate balance becomes unhinged when the menopausal years strike. Menopause usually begins between the ages of 47 and 56 but the perimenopausal years, which means ‘around menopause’ can start in the mid-thirties; this usually varies from woman to woman. It is at this time the production of estrogen and progesterone begins to decline.

When estrogen levels strike an all time low, the brain and in particular the hypothalamus, has no way of knowing the menstrual cycle is no longer necessary. Confused, the brains’ neurotransmitters keeps initiating the process of pumping FSH and LH into the bloodstream. (There are a lot of receptors for estrogen, progesterone and androgens throughout the brain) In the perimenopausal women her LH and FSH can rise higher than her fertile years…all due to the fact that the pituitary and hypothalamus are alert and aware of the lower levels of estrogen in the body.

So, in perimenopause and menopause your estrogen levels rise higher than they’ve ever been but they’re also constantly fluctuating up and down like a yo-yo. Estrogen and progesterone are supposed to be balanced but in our menopausal years, progesterone can dip to all time low. This can affect the adrenals and the hormone they create called cortisol. When this happens we can actually suffer premenstrual symptoms (PMS): like fighting the strong desire to nod off, craving for sweets, muscle aches and pains, headaches, breast tenderness, uncomfortable bloating, depression and emotional problems. Unfortunately when a woman complains to her doctor of these symptoms, she’s given an estrogen patch, pill or cream, which only makes all of her symptoms worse!

Usually the first sign of menopause is irregular periods caused by hormone fluctuation, inconsistent ovulation and decreased levels of estrogen. With lower levels of estrogen, the luteal phase of the menstrual period is shortened. The luteal phase usually occurs around 15-28 days of the regular menstrual period. FSH and LH are generally at their lowest levels at this time but increase during menopause and FSH more so in an effort to continue ovarian production. The brain has no way of knowing the ovaries egg production has come to a stand-still. The increase levels of FSH in perimenopausal women and menopausal women is probably the cause of hot flashes, which tend to increase the production of estrogen. As estrogen levels drop back to normal, so too do the hot flashes.

There are three main types of estrogen: estrone, estriol and estradiol, and they each have a different role in the body. Estradiol is by far the strongest. Estrone is one that seems to promote breast cancer, and estriol is the weakest, appearing to protect users from breast cancer.http://vitalitymagazine.com/article/hormones-for-healthy-menopause/

Hormonal fluctuations, imbalances and lower levels of progesterone to estrogen can cause us to feel panicky, anxious and even depressed.

Before we get into the thyroid, there’s one more organ in the body that I’d like to address….the liver. The liver is an amazing organ, weighing a little heavier than the brain, that works 24/7 synthesizing and detoxifying the body. Hormonal problems can occur when the liver isn’t functioning normally—that’s because it’s here that the hormones are assembled and then broken down to be excreted from the body. When the liver is overcome by toxins from the environment, food, stress and other factors it doesn’t work as happily as it should. When it gets bogged down, every organ in the body can be affected—it can cause skin problems, cellulite, abdominal bloating, indigestion, high blood pressure, fatigue, mood swings and depression.

The liver is one of the main factors in the formation of sexual hormones estrogen, progesterone and testosterone. It also produces up to a quart of bile a day. Bile production is one of the most important jobs of the liver. Bile works a bit like detergent, emulsifying the fat content in our food and changing it to fuel—the fat is changed into very fine droplets so that it can easily blend with the water in the intestines. Bile is made of water, cholesterol and bile salts—its job is to absorb digested fats, cholesterol (both HDL and LDL), and vitamins A, D E and K. If your bile is thicker than normal, you could become constipated. And if you don’t empty your bowels regularly, the estrogen your liver had excreted out of the body, could be reabsorbed in your system…causing an estrogen overload in the body. Bile salts act as a deodorizer for our excretement—if when you go to washroom and the smell is offensive…it’s possible the liver isn’t working as well as it should.

Don’t panic when you hear the word cholesterol. Cholesterol is one of the most vital substances in every cell of your body. Doctors aren’t as eager now to offer cholesterol-lowering drugs because studies done, show cholesterol-lowering drugs can increase the risk of cancer and other illnesses as well as increase in anxiety and mental illness.

Menopause creates a lot of anger and resentment in many women. Anger and resentment are the two keywords used by Traditional Chinese Medicine and healers to describe a unbalanced liver and gallbladder. Whether we like it or not, menopause tells us our youth is over. If we try to avoid it all we do is create more stress in our lives and stuck energy or congestion in the body. Menopause is a time to look at parts of us we’ve ignored or kept hidden…we have to look at the emotions we don’t like so much in ourselves and reconnect with the good and the bad to recreate ourselves into a more authentic being. When we do, we’ll touch upon areas in our live we’ve been out of touch with and integrate them into our personality.

“Problems with the liver often reflect strong negative emotions that have not been dealt with by the individual….Deep anger and chronic fault-finding—with self and others—can help weaken liver function. Are we trying to deceive ourselves about something negative in our life? Are we refusing to clean up an aspect of our life? Are we exposed to constant complaining and criticism? Do we have feelings of “I never do anything right”? Are we refusing to clean up the past and move on? Are we wallowing in self-pity and hatred? Are we not doing what we can to help ourselves? Are we refusing to take the initiative (after all, the liver strongly affects overall metabolism)?

Problems in this area [gallbladder] can indicate we are trying to digest things too quickly or are not digesting what we have experienced; we are not learning our lessons. Such problems as gallst ones can indicate we are holding onto hard thoughts and bitter experiences rather than moving past them. We are holdng onto the past and allowing it to fill our life, rather than moving forward with joy and anticipation to the future.” THE HEALER”S MANUAL – A Beginner’s Guide to Vibrational Therapies ~ Ted Andrews

One of the best foods to improve the liver and keep the bile flowing is beets. Beets can also help to reduce the forming of gallstones. Dark leafy greens, broccoli, cauliflower, artichokes, cabbage and brussel sprouts help in the metabolism of estrogen. A supplement called milk thistle is great for the liver and can be found in your local health food store. Garlic together with ginger root has been known to be a great liver flush or cleanser for the body. And a high-fiber diet will keep your cholesterol and blood sugar levels balanced and your bowels working properly.

“Before women go through menopause, they have higher levels of estrogen and progesterone in their bodies. But there are other factors at play as well. These hormone levels, combined with a brain style that more constantly mixes emotion with language, lead to a tendency toward self-reflection. Women who have not yet gone through menopause innately tend to be less aggressive and impulsive in their communication, meaning they are more likely to not say what they really think in an effort to preserve relationships and family ties. This communication style often settles a tense situation but it doesn’t necessarily address the personal needs of the woman involved, which can lead to thyroid problems at a young age. Woman’s communication styles—and their incidence of thyroid problems is higher than the number of men or younger women. As women enter into menopause, the ratio of estrogen, progesterone and testosterone shifts, with the first two falling the last one rising. At this point women become more impulsive and less reflective, and this new communication style often creates new problems within their relationships and family. Then, their incidence of thyroid disorders escalates. Women are then biologically predisposed to assert themselves by reacting, moving, and expressing more after menopause. Whether it is a matter of not stating what you need or ineffectively expressing your desires, the inability to communicate well leads to thyroid problems. If you can’t assert yourself effectively and you feel hopelessly stifled or are constantly getting in arguments, you are at an increased risk for thyroid problems.

Other studies have tied a subdued personality and an inability to speak up for yourself to thyroid disease. Specifically, people who have had a history of past trauma and often struggle with power dynamics in their later relationships tend to have problems with the thyroid. The experiences of their past conditioned them to be submissive, overly compliant and unable to assert themselves. They don’t “have a say” in their own lives and lack a drive for independence and self-sufficiency.” All Is Well: Heal Your Body With Medicine, Affirmations, and Intuition ~Louise L. Hay and Mona Lisa Schulz

The thyroid is a small butterfly shaped gland located in the front part of the throat at the base of the neck just over the trachea or windpipe. It is the main gland that controls your body’s metabolic rate and its energy; that is the rate cells burn food calories for energy. (The thyroid controls the growth, temperature, and function of every cell in your body) In one full year the thyroid will probably produce only about one teaspoon of hormones but this tiny little amount has a lot to do with your energy levels.

It really has surprised me that even now with more doctors informed about low thyroid in the perimenopausal/menopausal years that many women and men are not tested or misdiagnosed. Many tests results for TSH (thyroid-stimulating hormone) come back within the normal range even though the person(s) have all the symptoms of an underactive thyroid. As well, many people aren’t even given a blood test to check their TSH levels and instead put on antidepressants or in some cases birth control pills. One woman that came to clinic, said her doctor didn’t take her symptoms seriously and told her to exercise more. Wtf?

“…hypothyroidism increases cholesterol, a major risk factor for heart disease…older women with subclinical hypothyroidism are nearly twice as likely as women without the condition to have heart attacks and were 70 percent more likely to have hardened aortas—the body’s main artery—than those of normal hormone activity.

Heart disease is not only the only disturbing consequence of untreated hypothyroidism. According to Richard Shames, M.D., author of Thyroid Power, thyroid malfunction has been linked to such disorders as fibromyalgia, eczema, infertility, attention deficit disorder, phobias, loss of ambition, panic attacks, depression, and other mental illnesses”. The Hormone Survival Guide for PERIMENOPAUSE, Nisha Jackson, Ph.D.

If you think I’m trying to scare you, well in a way I am. Many of us women have a ‘knowing’ something’s not quite right but don’t refute the diagnosis of our doctors. If you feel something’s amiss, get a second opinion!

If you’ve been under constant high-stress, high-pressure situations then your adrenaline is constantly rushing to give you energy. Your sympathetic nervous system is ‘on’ constantly, working overtime and causing your metabolism to go sky high. Whether the stress is positive or netavie, the body has the same response. The problem with this is that your parasympathetic nervous can’t do its job of calming you down. This can have adverse affects on your immune and cardiovascular system as well as your emotions. When this happens the sympathetic nervous system works overtime causing your adrenals to pump and secrete more adrenaline and cortisol. You can tell this is happening…you can feel your heart pounding in your chest. Too much cortisol is also associated with obesity, high blood pressure and insulin resistance which runs you the risk of diabetes. It has been noted that 80 percent of all illnesses are caused by stress-related disorders. These can range from migraine headaches to high blood pressure, ulcers, arthritis, asthma, eczema and as we know heart disease.

The more adrenaline produced in the body, the more the body needs progesterone and unfortunately during the perimenopause/menopause years we are more deficit in this hormone. In fact, stress can lead to estrogen dominance and deplete our progesterone even more.

We are constantly evolving and changing….change is an upward cyclical movement; life is a circle that returns to the beginning and moves on and on into a spiral. The source is endless…the only thing we can honestly say about life is that things are going to change. Will you welcome change as new opportunity or will you resist change with a vengeance? I’ve found no one to explain menopause as well as Abraham channeled by Ester Hicks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1kz-DAC8BM Abraham believes menopause is economically driven.

Adapting to change takes awareness, honesty, acceptance and patience. It is our lack of awareness of our bodies natural processes that set us up with a constant chain reaction of stress. It is interesting how fear distorts our true feelings which causes self-rejection and the rejection of others. Look at change as an opportunity to look upon yourself and others with patience trust and love….it is true, we create our life experiences by our attitudes.

MENOPAUSE AND THE KUNDALINI/CHAKRAS

A wonderful book by Susan Weed called “In The Menopausal Years: The Wise Woman Way” she mentions ‘hot flashes’ are ‘kundalini training sessions and not classified as a dis-ease or syndrome.

“Kundalini is the root of all spiritual experience…Kundalini is a special kind of energy known in many cultures, including Tibetan, Indian, Sumerian, Chinese, Irish, Aztec, and Greece. Kundalini is said to be hot, fast, powerful and large. It exists within the earth, within all life, and within each person. Psychoanalyst, Carl G Jung called Kundalini “anima”. Kundalini is usually represented as a serpent coiled at the base of the spine, but women’s mystery stories locate it in the uterus—or the area where the uterus was, if a hysterectomy has occurred. During both puberty and menopause, a woman’s kundalini is difficult to control and may cause a number of symptoms.

East Indian yogis, spend lifetimes learning to activate, or wake up, their kundalini. This is also called “achieving enlightenment”. When they succeed, a surge of super-heated energy goes up the spine, through the nerves, dilating blood vessels, and fueling itself with hormones. As kundalini continues to travel up the spine, it changes the functioning of the endocrine, cardiovascular and nervous systems. Not just in yogis, but in any woman who allows herself to become aware of it. Menopause is a kind of enlightenment. Hot flashes are kundalini training sessions.” Susan Weed

The yogis see menopause as a time of celebration of a time of deepening wisdom and insight. Released from our childbearing years, menopause is supposed to give us more freedom and to focus more on ourselves, to go after our passions and develop our spiritual awareness. Unfortunately the physical problems we encounter with menopause makes it harder to imagine or see it as a blessing.

As Susan Weed, noted above, ‘hot flashes are kundalini training’. Sometimes though, these hot flashes cause the kundalini to rise faster than it should, creating a variety of unpleasant symptoms, such as: rushed heat, electric current, emotional or physical release, inner sounds, visions, creepy feelings under the skin, and hallucinations, out of body experiences and even possibly fainting. All these sensations can be frightening and if a women is unaware of the cause can cause a mental breakdown. The kundalini needs strength to deal with it but not brute force but the strength of inner peace and belief in your fullest essence.

The kundalini is a current that moves you, it rouses, awakens, expands and brightens your energy. The clearer your energy the easier it is for others to find and gravitate towards you, to support, assist and help you and for you in turn to guide others.

Most doctors, psychologists and gynecologists do not recognize the kundalini phenomenon and will suppress it with drugs.

Clearing each chakra, is a safe way to start the kundalini process. As each chakra is clear of obstructing energy, each of the centers will be able to hold the rising energy comfortably. As the chakras open, we gain better health, emotional balance, and vitality, and as the energy rises naturally, our psychic abilities open and develop as well.

“It is not “all in your mind”; it is all in your energies. The emotions of menopause reside in the chemistries of our bodies, and they are powerful. At the same time, massive, cataclysmic shifts are retooling your body from a baby-making machine to an independence you never before could have imagined. While nothing is going to stop you from going through this tumultuous process, energy medicine can deeply support you during the transition and help you come out of it healthier, happier and more independent. By becoming adept at balancing your energies, you are better able to navigate your way into the gifts of menopause: empowerment, self reliance and freedom from the compulsion to cater to others needs or agendas for you.” Donna Eden ~Energy Medicine for Woman

Energy medicine incorporates alternative and holistic medicines. It’s interesting to note that in Chinese Medicine, the word Menopause means ‘Second Spring’. Second Spring is about accepting the fact that we age and change.

“Embracing a Second Spring requires our acceptance of aging and change. In our culture, we must contend with a great fear of death and aging that expresses itself in reverence for the fountain of youth. But in most Asian countries, many women do not suffer in menopause. This is partly explained by differences in diet and lifestyle, but I believe the main difference is that age is respected and valued in these cultures. This, of course, does not mean that at menopause one cannot be energetic, beautiful and vibrant. Rather, it is possible to be all these things at any age. Chinese Medicine celebrates the natural stages of our lives, including menopause, and offers techniques for a smooth transition.

Many of the discomforts that women experience in perimenopause are an expression of imbalances that have already existed in their bodies for years, sometimes decades.

For women who enter menopause after a hysterectomy, chemotherapy, or some other medical intervention, the symptoms can be more dramatic. Balancing the body with Chinese Medicine is also recommended in this case. Every situation is unique, as every woman’s experience is unique.” Dawn Aarons http://vitalitymagazine.com/article/second-spring/

Alternative healing, self-healing and meditation help to awaken the body to its highest potential. Healing creates a harmonious interaction with all parts of you; body, mind and spirit. Healing through Reiki, massage, Quantum Touch, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and many other alternative therapies will not make your menopause go away. But it will help you to feel less tense and open up your inner energy and relieve you of the many fears associated with aging.

I’ve touched on as many topics as I can that are relevant to the changes in a woman’s body. There are so many other symptoms to look at that to cover them would be difficult and very challenging. There are many really great websites, articles and books out there to keep you uptodate with the changes you’ve felt. Just as the earth’s flowing life force shifts, so does yours. As you adapt to the natural changes in your body, you will project those feelings to others…and in so doing, this will affect other women, in a postiive way, going through the same thing.